Time Warner Cable Employs Drone to Get Fiber across Flooded River

Time Warner Cable (TWC) reports on its "Untangled" corporate blog that engineers battling service outages in flooded areas of Texas used a drone to help run a fiber-optic cable across an overflowing river. Jay Gormley, director, content production at TWC, reports that recent flooding in Texas knocked out the fiber cable that served San Marco, TX. When crews arrived to repair or replace the cable, they discovered that the Blanco River had risen above only bridge across the waterway. This left the crews with the problem of how to get the cable across the river and into town. After first trying to shoot a line across the river with a bow and arrow (the line kept breaking), Construction Manager Neville Stewart thought to use the airborne drone he owns as an alternative. The drone carried a lightweight line, attached to a heavier line, across the river. The crews then managed to get across the river and pull the fiber-optic cable ashore. TWC posted this video of the story on the blog.